If you’ve tuned in to Infowars over the years, you might have heard a very angry man screaming about the 2020 election being stolen for “reanimated corpse” Joe Biden, or chemicals in the water turning frogs gay, or the Sandy Hook school shooting, which killed 20 children and six staff members, being faked. Founded in 1999, Alex Jones’s Infowars has long been a platform for toxic conspiracy theories with real-life consequences, in addition to weird dietary supplements. But if the Onion has its way, the InfoWars of the future will have a very different impact.
The satirical newspaper has been working for several years to take over the site, amid legal battles over Jones’s false claims about the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting. Pending a Texas court’s approval, the platform could soon be in the hands of the Onion and a newly installed creative director, comedian Tim Heidecker, known for his surreal sketches and mockery of the far right. The result would be the transformation of a dangerous political weapon into a comedy hub that undermines everything Infowars once stood for.
“One of my first thoughts is just what a great joke it would be, over time, if we could change the meaning and understanding of the site itself,” Heidecker says, “and that’s [Jones’s] legacy.”
